Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Cocoon - Response

The discussion about abstract spaces, physical spaces, mental spaces, social spaces and the inter-relationships is very refreshing. Through the cocoon, people experience a unique space that is passively tailor-made for them based on their acquired taste of existence in such spaces. I just got off the phone with my mother who has traveled to all the continents except South America and Antarctica. I thought she would be the perfect example for me to relate to the transportation / transformation concept that the paper delves deep into. The need for her to disconnect/connect herself from/to culturally, geographically, economically, aesthetically different social spaces has been growing since she was a child when she was deprived of it due to a joint-family based micro-economy in her house and other factors like her father not being able to support that need due to various other micro-nuclear strands of relationships within her family.

But, once she became independent and established herself, she could feed that need. Now, she could transport and transform herself into various different people. Experience the same breath of fresh air in a geographically and culturally alien space has a totally different feel to it. The cocoon here which was supposed to shut out outside influence from the social space as you inhabit or experience it and still managed to travel and transform its intended purpose by having a life of its own. She just got back from a tour to another country where she was supposed to wear a veil in public to go around.

I could not stop from comparing it to the cocoon. She had the time of her life in this place where she says the civilization is so unspoilt and so very less exploited that even through all the restrictions she had a peaceful and mind numbingly rollicking experience there. She rates it the first among all the countries she's traveled and Switzerland comes next close to second place.

Having said that butterflies come out of cocoons. And the cocoon is one of the avatars of the butterfly when it is young. Even though it is invisible to the naked eye I see cocoons around everyone and everything in this world. Enough of my rambling now. Overall I think the design spoke to me in various physical, social, metaphysical and cultural levels.